


A Covenant's Blood

by fewlmewn



Series: Original Stories [16]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Clones, Curses, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Necromancy, Religious Cults, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:08:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22279906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fewlmewn/pseuds/fewlmewn
Summary: As the most frightening attack in recent memory took place within the Hall of Crystals, someone else was battling her own demons, and coming to a twisted epiphany.
Series: Original Stories [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1043202





	A Covenant's Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [Born to Die](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17546219)

_ From a letter found in the room of [REDACTED], an accounting clerk for the Necropolis of Imidrith prior to her disappearance. _

_ An account of the events that followed the terror attack perpetrated by an extremist anti-Necromancy cult, through the actions of Hall of Crystals’ Head Illusionist L. E. Ehlatis. _

  
  


I imagine there to be some perks to working in the Hall of Crystals. If I weren’t under threat of lifetime imprisonment if said knowledge came into the wrong hands, I would very much enjoy knowing who in the city is resorting to our ‘services’; but as it stands, knowing would make this that much harder.

The Hall is such a fragile thing for those working in it, but to outsiders it must feel like the beacon of immortality. The reassurance that, with enough coin, you can buy eternal life does something to one’s ego, makes being a cut throat all the more sweeter when your actions have the immediate return of allowing you to keep going forever. I can’t share any names, but believe me when I say that without a shred of doubt, those who can afford the Hall are heartless bastards. Gods know where the coin they spend comes from, whose poor sod’s sweat and blood it owes its worth to. For every new Crystal, dozens of farmers and sailors are breaking their back out there to make it so that some asshole can achieve eternal life.

The sort of money you’d need for a Crystal doesn’t come from honest work. I should know, as I was keeping the accounts at the time of the attack.

Not much of a position, but as a newly graduated wizard, with a mind practiced in the way of arithmetics, that was what the Necropolis had allowed me to practice. Some days were ruled by tedium and loneliness in the small office near the gates to the Necropolis, compelling me to look forward to taking part to some business meeting of any relevance whatsoever - anything to escape the boredom of endless calculations.

But, of course, non-disclosure on what I was witnessing meant it was no fun at all, and I ended up having to run numbers to see how many generations’ worth of Crystals the bastard at hand could afford.

Despite having studied Necromancy, the thought sprung to me that it wasn’t right, that it went against nature. I know I shouldn’t say it, lest I be associated with terrorists and the like, but what happened with Illusionist Ehlatis almost felt like an act of... bravery.

My parents are honest workers. My father’s a baker and my mother teaches little ones their letters at a small, nameless private institute outside of the city boundaries. It’s quite the commute to reach the suburbs, but the children appreciate her work, and there’s never a day she returns home without a smile on her face. It wasn’t easy to afford the Academy, you must understand, and I had to work odd jobs all throughout my studies, up until the apprenticeship in the Necropolis proper began, at which point I had to leave home, leave my family, and keep whatever I was about to see inside for myself for however many years would come. ‘Accommodations’ were afforded to me, and I still hate the word now. As if someone had to make room for me, like I was an afterthought. I deeply disliked how unwanted the dingy, barren room and the solitary, wonky desk made me feel. But I gritted my teeth and before I knew it, it was over. At that point, I had only seen Illusionist Ehlatis in passing, and the only thought of her in my mind was that the name rang a bell. Once I had time and means to consult a library, I looked up the name, and I immediately recalled the Ehlatis lineage.

_ Lineage  _ isn’t the right word. Archmage Awant Ehlatis doesn’t have any children by blood, and everyone who shares his name came to him by way of adoption, or they tend to be people he saved from poverty, at any rate. Considering her family name, I expected Illusionist Ehlatis to reside in the lodging within the Necropolis reserved for the important folk. However, I found shortly after that she had preferred more modest accommodations in a nondescript annex, similar to the one where I was staying in at the time.

Whatever envy I might’ve felt for her position disappeared at that knowledge, and I even came to admire her modesty. She always wore simple - if elegant - silver robes, a signature of Illusionism graduates, and the only spot of eccentricity was her crimson red headscarf. I doubt she had any hair under it, but that’s not my business, merely an observation.

Perhaps it makes sense that she did what she did. Someone as frugal as her could’ve very well resented the kind of people Archmage Ehlatis, her adoptive father, belonged to - that sort of pointless pomp and squandering of money.

I know I did; so if her hatred towards that particular category of people was anything like my own… I understand why she did it. I don’t condone it, Gods no, but I understand the motive.

Still, that day was… challenging. For all of us.

At once, people started filing out of the gates in front of my window in a composed rush, and it wasn’t long before my supervisor barged into the tiny office to ‘promote’ me from out of the blue.

“Can you revive the dead?” he said, out of breath. The question made me laugh, and I looked around at the Necropolis, the City of Dead around us, amused. “Of course” came my very unironical reply. He all but dragged me from my chair to the Hall of Crystals by the sleeve of my robe. In the rush, I forgot to grab my black, Necromancer’s cape on the coat hanger, and dressed as ambiguously plain as I was, I see how no one paid me any mind in the ensuing chaos.

I was just fed up with my job is all. I had spent months looking at numbers and I was shaking with excitement at the prospect of finally being thrown into the thick of what my area of interest entailed. It was… more grim than anticipated, but still exciting. Pardon the poor taste, but I can’t help it. It  _ was  _ exciting. Still is, to me. Most necromancers grow bored with their jobs, but not me. Not after what had felt like ages, before someone finally recognized my talents, albeit distractedly, in the midst of the Necropolis’ worst accident yet.

A porter, on the scene of the crime completely by chance, was sporting deep overflowing gashes across his chest, but since that wasn’t the purview of Necromancy, I left him be. I don’t regret leaving him to bleed out. I couldn’t have known the priestess by his side wouldn’t have been able to stitch him up properly, and I had  _ my  _ orders. A few days later I found out he had died, poor man.

On the opposite end of the same corridor was another clerk I knew from my time in accounting. Dasha, a well-meaning but not very bright apprentice, was sitting against a Crystal, clutching her belly and glassy-eyed. The bubbling water inside the cylinder and the arcane torches along the hallway gave her a sort of ethereal backdrop, but she seemed well enough that the thought of inconveniencing myself with her didn’t even cross my mind. She was passed out when I made my way back along the corridor, and I’ve been informed that she still lives, although the curse persists with no signs of improvement.

Then, I turned the corner, and I saw a gaggle of necromancers busy with the fallout.

At the time, I had no idea of what had happened, I simply assumed a faulty Crystal had collapsed, bringing others with itself and causing a domino effect of destruction.

It wasn’t as simple as that.

I had no idea of Illusionist Ehlatis’ involvement, that she’d done it deliberately nor that by the time I got there she had already escaped. The priority was salvaging all we could. So, I got to work.

With the Crystal of twenty or so cylinders shattered, the entire balance of carefully placed illusions upon that sector was dispelled and long before I reached the intended crossway of corridors I was already surrounded by things that will persist in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

It had never occurred to me how important keeping up appearances can be in certain, sensitive situations. I’m from a modest home, all I know on the matter is that I’m expected to look neat when I sit at my desk each morning, and that I should be upstanding and polite with each visitor that is allowed through the gates of the Necropolis. As a child, I fell down a flight of stairs, and I nearly split my skull in two once I reached the bottom of it. As luck would have it, I managed to turn at the last second, amid the vertigo, and only my left ear absorbed the impact. The point collided against the cobblestone in a crunch, and later the physician saw fit to clip the injured part. They’re uneven, but the cut is clean and with longer hair I can mask the discrepancy quite well. No one in the Necropolis ever demanded I do something about my ear, no one ever said it looked bad, disgusting or ‘wrong’. I can see how something as trivial as that can go unnoticed among the myriad of homunculi and distorted fetuses populating the Hall.

Boneless, amorphous creatures were suspended in red-tinged, murky water, streaked through with something akin to white mucus and dotted with clear globules of floating goop. A few tanks were chipped and cracked, and a thin, snaking rivulet of liquid was pouring out in a lazy stream. The floor was completely flooded by the substance, and with each step more and more of its sour, rotting scent rose to my nostrils.

The bodies ondulated, long gnarled finger-like protrusions beckoning me closer.

Eyes like wet, soft meat, white and bloodshot all the way to the pinprick, lifeless pupil, moved slowly and in unison to hone in on me. They followed me and I trembled, unsteady on my feet on the slippery stone.

One of the senior necromancers on the scene barked something at me, commanding me to get it together and get to work.

I doubled over one of the ‘clients’, nearly fully formed and human-like. It gasped, trying to draw breath through useless lungs. I placed my bare hands across the slimy, snot-covered ribcage, feeling soft cartilage across the torso, even where it should’ve been bone. Without a safe container, the creature had no chance of survival, and the spell over its crystal had been interrupted. I wasn’t sure what they expected me to do. Recover years of investment? Have something to show the client, in lieu of their unfinished twin?

I slid my fingers up its neck, unsure of how to go about it. There were no bones to snap, no blood or air flow to interrupt. I soiled my robe to draw my wand, but I could think of nothing else to cease its suffering. I closed my eyes, pressed the point to its temple, and with a sizzle and a strangled moan of pain, the shock stole what life the creature had left in itself.

I drew the runes next to its head next, and within a handful of moments, it awakened again. Just as I expected, the gaze held no emotion, and its legs were unable to hold any weight. Rubbery, flimsy stilts it never could’ve walked with. Not ever.

I didn’t recognize who it belonged to, and I didn’t ask. I just watched that corpse for a few more moments before moving to the next. By the end, those that had survived the blast had been ‘raised’ under our control. They weren’t alive, they were like puppets, without even a hand or strings to tell them what to do. They just laid on the floor, awaiting instructions their mangled, incomplete bodies would never have been able to carry out.

But I didn’t stop to wonder what would’ve happened to them later, as I’m sure the bottom of the Jeweled Bay is littered by other such failed experiments. Is that blasphemous? I’m sorry - as far as our clients are aware, we offer the utmost secrecy and dignity to anyone, or anything, we work on. But after seeing the reality underneath the illusions of the Hall, I can’t bring myself to keep such thoughts to myself.

I’d never worried about the process before then. We learn how such arcane wonders come to be at the Academy, of course, but we’re never shown the result. We just have to apply our enchantment, then the Crystals are left to the Illusionists, who tend to them in such a way that pleases the eye as well as the spirit.

I felt very much like a janitor, that day.

Something I haven’t told anybody else is that I took something from the scene of the attack. Nothing relevant to any investigation - internal or otherwise. Something that, arguably, could be considered nothing but trash in the aftermath. In fact, I do believe I’ve done everyone a favor by taking  _ that thing _ .

I’ve given my testimony, I’m writing this only became everything I’ve seen compels me to leave some kind of account of my version of the events. I’ve written too much, and I’m about to share something even more unpleasant… I expect to be far enough away from the Necropolis by the time anyone thinks to check in on me and finds this note. I haven’t made very many friends here, so that should give me ample time to leave with this  _ thing _ I collected from the Hall.

  
  


Our clients often tend to lie, in order to achieve preferential treatment. Some simply mask their identity or upbringing to be placed among the nobility - I’ve seen enough such cons fall through when the cost of upkeep is revealed to them, uncovering how they don’t have the means to sustain such accommodations. But in other cases the deception is subtler.

Have you ever wondered what the restrictions are on commissioning a Crystal? There aren’t many, especially when coin can bypass or pay for so much. But there are some.

Beside proof of earnings to assure the Necropolis that every monetary aspect will be well covered and taken care of, there is a rule in place before one can undergo the process.

Your body at the time the spell is cast should be exactly in the condition you wish to preserve come the moment the Crystal will serve its purpose. Growing new limbs if the client is missing them is not under our purview, and the same could be said of any conditions that alter someone’s mind or violate their soul.

Really terrible things tend to happen if someone partakes in the creation of a Crystal during a pregnancy - whether the condition is known, visible, secret, hidden from the staff or what have you. People’s bodies, kept in stasis inside a Crystal, should never have foreign… material, so to speak.

One of the bodies near the scene of the attack was one such case.

The woman looked young enough, I’d wager she was barely twenty years of age. Probably some noble’s daughter. Her body had been thrown against the side of the Crystal in the blast, and shards of glass had gone everywhere. Liquid was pooling out from her vessel and she was thrown over the jagged wall of her Crystal like a wet, spineless glove.

I don’t know how, but the  _ thing _ she was carrying inside had kept growing. Her stomach bulged obscenely, slimy skin pulsing from the trauma of the deflagration. I know for a fact she couldn’t have been accepted if she’d shown up with such a visible belly. Then, the baby must’ve kept growing inside her twin.

But…  _ how _ ?

I had never really understood the ethical and physical limitations behind the “no foreign genetic material in the Crystal” rule. I assumed it was so in order to prevent strange amalgamations, or to avoid harmful interactions with the enchantments. But seeing that strange baby burst out of the belly of its mother’s clone, still suspended inside a placenta and with every bit you’d expect from a pregnant body attached and functional… one thought rose to mind.

Whoever the relatives were that had their own Crystals next to or near the young woman’s, they had known. They  _ had to _ have known. And they had made arrangements with the Archmages leading the Necropolis so that her  _ mistake _ could be swept away, forgotten and imprisoned inside the mother’s twin. Perhaps this was a common way to abort an unwanted child and I simply didn't’ know of it. Perhaps the people in charge had only just found out about this alternative way to transfer a pregnancy through the magics of the Hall of Crystals... but I struggle to believe this was the first instance of foreign material kept in the same space as one of our clients.

I threw my soiled cape across the ball of slime and gathered it in my arms. When no one was looking, I ran off the scene, past Dasha’s unconscious figure and up the stairs to the upper levels. I didn’t meet anyone else, luckily. I squeezed the bundle in my grip a little to tightly as I ran up the stone steps, and the placenta must’ve burst. A fetid liquid like sewage started running down my forearms and soiling my robes. It made the path behind me slick with water, and I cut across the gardens to lose the trail in the grass. I slammed the door to my bedroom behind me, heaving breaths with euphoria and terror at what I’d done. I unwrapped the foul package and found the misshapen form with membrane stuck to its mouth and nose. I freed its airways, uncaring of the placenta still binding the rest of its body and the creature drew breath!

I couldn’t believe it.

I had no words - I still don’t - for the twisted miracle in front of my eyes. This thing is alive. It’s a far cry from being fully formed, but I know my way around decomposition, how hard can it be to animate a living thing until it’s strong enough to survive?

By the time anyone finds this letter, the room will probably be saturated with the smell of death and sick. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to keep my lunch to myself for long after running back to my room, not after everything I’ve seen. I apologize for the state of my ‘accomodations’, my parents taught me better than this, but I really have no time to clean up.

  
  


I’m going to run away, the creature is asleep but I feel like it’ll wake any moment now and I’m not looking forward to discover if it’ll scream or wail, if it’s capable to.

I won’t say where I intend to go, I reckon it’s no one’s business.

I committed no crime. I didn’t even steal someone’s property, really, not when the girl wasn’t supposed to be pregnant in the first place.

It’s mine now, and I’ll treat it better than its mother and family ever intended to do.

Mom, dad, I’m sorry I have to disappear like this, but I’ve first disappeared when the Necropolis took me away from home to lock me up here to run numbers and be bored to death under the pretence of confidentiality. Maybe I’ll actually be able to return home in the future, now that I’ll surely be fired from the Necropolis and erased from the Academy’s ledgers for the way I used my powers. Just give me some time to understand how this creature works, and do right by it. I’ll be back soon.

Tidy up my old room, we’ll need it.

[REDACTED]


End file.
